W

ISCONSIN and Utah are storm centers of agitation concerning free speech for professors

and freedom of the state universities from anything that smacks of political control. In Wisconsin the appearance of "ripper" bills in the legislature under a new Republican administration, the findings of a so-called educational "survey," and the activities of various Wisconsin investigating bodies have attracted national attention as phases of an alleged reactionary attack upon progressive educational policies for which the State University of Wisconsin is noted. In Utah the President's dismissal of four members of the faculty of the State University was followed by the resignation of 14. others, and charges of repression of speech and undue exercize of Mormon Church influences have been published broadcast. The secretary of the American Association of University Professors, who arrived in Utah to investigate the situation, committed himself only so far as to say that "the University of Utah is facing the same proposition that has confronted other universities." However, the mere existence of such a newly organized professional body of some 900 members, banded together to discover and make clear the status of professors, not as to salaries but as to tenure of office and freedom of thought and teaching, may be fairly considered a national symptom of university unrest.

There seems to be no logical reason, in the opinion of the N. Y. Press, why a state government should not employ the State-paid faculty of its university

in the analysis of public problems. The difficulty is that it appears to be im

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IDEA" UNIVERSITY WHO IS UNDER FIRE. Reactionary forces are said to be after the

The issue in Wisconsin, according THE "WISCONSIN to the Milwaukee Leader, is "simply whether the university shall become an educational factory for the production scalp of Charles R. Van Hise, head of the of standpat politicians, or whether it shall teach the truth as discovered by perils of university leadership in social, ecountrammeled investigation."

"The talk of economy from the defenders of the gang that are looting the State of more each year than the university has cost since its foundation, is cheap demagoguery. In fact, it was not until the university interfered with the schemes of the lumber and water power corporations to grab public resources that the university critics declared war. During all the years that the real estate and pine woods gang was looting the university land grants without protest from the faculty, there was no complaint of the university being 'in politics.""

progressive State University of Wisconsin. Retrenchment and administration on "efficiency" lines are demanded by legislative officials. The

nomic and political questions arouse nationwide discussion.

possible to separate such problems from practical politics. It was a dangerous thing to have it get abroad even as a jest that the university was "running the State," comments the Springfield Republican.

"That, of course, was never true, but in the faculty the State had available experts on many live subjects, and so long as a radical and creative spirit controlled politics and was matched by a similar spirit in the university, it was natural that their

services should be freely called upon and freely given. It may be that this harmonious relation led in some quarters to State and its university, to a too sanguine a false impression of the relations of the view of the rôle to be played by organized education in guiding public affairs. America is not yet ready for the Kulturstaat of Hegel's dream, and great as are the services which university experts can give there is need of the utmost caution; full advantage, perhaps, ought not to be taken of every favorable wind of politics, for fear of the reaction. In its zealous efforts to bring education to the people the university has been radical but in a way to strengthen its position. If some of its members, as is quite possible, have shown a measure of indiscretion in regard to politics, they have learned their lesson, and it may be hoped that no blow will be struck which will injure a great and useful institution."

Perhaps the university has gone too far in making an experimental laboratory of the state at large, suggests the Indianapolis News; but one lesson of the present controversy is that the people are seeing that a great university can be unmade in considerably less time than it can be made. The legislative proposal to reorganize the whole educational machinery of the state under centralized control of three business men appointed by the governor, the Los Angeles Tribune considers a peculiar It is "quite out of keeping with the ordinary idea of controlling the policy of an educational system. A university conducted in conformity with. the ideas of 'three business men' would probably be just about as efficient as a great business concern if turned over to the control of three professional educators. On the other hand, every educational institution needs the advantage of the views and advice of business men, just as business men can profit by frequently advising with educators."

one.

"The meaning of all this is, put in plain words, that once given its head the progressivism and radicalism, that has been so much of a factor in political and social matters in this country for the last five years, was bound to make a demonstration of the unsoundness of its ideas and the unfitness of its adherents to be entrusted with practical affairs. The people have found out the truth, at last. And while radicals and demagogs may still be entrenched in a good many legislatures, the day is near at hand when even the remnant of power which they now exercize

will be taken from them."

But investigators find much more in the Wisconsin situation than evidence of mere political reaction. Much light has been thrown upon the complicated problem of state-supported education in Wisconsin in a series of comprehensive articles by Victor S. Yarros. These were written for the N. Y. Evening Post and have been quoted extensively. Mr. Yarros concludes that except for a few extremists at the capitol and in the university the difficulty would melt away by conference or mediation. The university would not oppose administrative improvements, altho the faculty is weary of investigations and averse to the application of so-called "business

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efficiency" record methods to academic work. On the other hand threatened snap legislation is likely to be modified after the legislators have learned from hearings and investigations what has actually been done. În a report of the Wisconsin Board of Public Affairs, with which a citizens' advisory committee cooperated, the friends of the principle of academic freedom will find encouragement. The Board says:

"The people may well look with concern upon assaults calculated to impair the usefulness of the institution. In such crises it is the duty of the State to defend freedom of investigation, freedom of instruction, and freedom of opinion and expression in the University, to the end that academic freedom may not be an empty phrase, but shall be a living fact."

The Board finds no evidence of med

dling or dictation or trying to run the On the contrary, lawmakers have constate, on the part of the University. sulted university men and used some

of them for service on commissions to advantage:

"The department under particular attack, that of economics, sociology, and political science, the board says, has grown in importance with the development of new problems in State and nation, but 'there has been no material increase in the appropriations for this work.' The board recommends that the department be given greater support, material and moral, than it has received in the past. . .

"Regents, professors, and students, as individuals, have taken part in campaigns and in the advocacy of measures and policies of legislation; members of the faculty have addressed student clubs on political questions, and have expressed their personal convictions, but in all this they have 'exercized only their right to independent thought and action as individuals and citizens.'

"No information 'has come to the board which shows that the University as an institution is or has been in party or factional politics.' Any attempt of the State, says the board, to prevent or discourage individual activity of professors or students in politics would be unAmerican. As to abuse by certain professors of opportunities provided by social and economic research, the board finds that 'some few forget their respon

Isibilities and use the sincere and earnest work done by the many as a cloak for indolence,' and favors more supervision."

The university's crisis shows more plainly than any other test the inesti

mable value of the great institution at Madison, observes the Richmond TimesDispatch:

"The whole country views with alarm the prospect of a cutting off of its activities. Incomparably, the most important thing about Wisconsin is the University of Wisconsin, as the general interest in its fate proves. The common sense of the Wisconsin people will prevent any serious injury to one of the most notable of American seats of learning, and the university will emerge from its tribulations a little more cautious but not a bit less helpful to its State."

F neutrality in the present war means indifference to the moral issues involved or failure to exercize our moral reason, then it is immorality, in the opinion of George Trumbull Ladd, Yale professor of mental and moral philosophy. To ask men to suspend or lay aside altogether their moral judgment or moral feeling is to ask them to suspend the highest privilege of their manhood. Neutrality cannot be commended, much less enjoined or commanded, except on moral grounds. Note, says Professor Ladd in the N. Y. Times, this most suggestive, if not in times like the present positively startling phenomenon: "Every exhortation to neutrality of whatever sort, and every urgent or subtile influence to break neutrality and openly or secretly espouse one of the two contesting sides, implies some supreme standard of the right and wrong, some measure, agreed upon, as to what is rational, what irrational, in human

conduct."

"Now, moral judgment and moral feeling is a matter, in some good sort, of live and let live. And there is no right more

intrinsically inalienable and no obligation more inviolably sacred than the right and the obligation to make up one's mind, conscientiously and in view of all the evidence, so far as trustworthy evidence is

available at all. The one last resort of

the man pestered or favored with importunity to form an opinion about the right and the wrong of a transaction like that of the present European war is the determination not to allow his judgment to be forced or bribed into the neutrality of

indifference, or into any kind of neutrality, or breach of neutrality, that is not strictly determined by the ethics of the case.

"We repeat, then, that the fundamental thing about an ethical neutrality is that it is the very opposite of indifference. Morality finds the attitude of moral indifference intolerable. The summons to neutrality in the name of ethics is the demand

for the regulation of judgment, feeling and conduct, on grounds of moral prin

ciple."

The "haughty, superior way" in which the Germans have proposed to take in hand the moral consciousness of thoughtful and fair-minded people in this country, Professor Ladd sets down as grossly immoral. Such an attitude toward others is of the very essence

of immorality. One can only keep his moral self-respect by free exercize of his own supremest right and divinest gift of moral judgment.

For the consideration of the complicated war problems a distinction is necessary between two kinds of neutrality:

"These two kinds are never quite the same; and they may get further apart until their attitude toward each other becomes antagonistic rather than otherwise.

Let us call these the diplomatic or governmental, and the popular, in the meaning of the word which would make it applicable to the unofficial body of the people.

"It is a significant fact that both the word 'neutrality' in its diplomatic meaning, and the state which it represents, are of modern origin. In the growth of the great Oriental monarchies and of the

Holy Roman or Germanic Empires no people or individuals were expected, and if the ruling powers could help it no people were allowed, to remain neutral. In modern diplomacy, however, that nation is 'neutral' which refrains from interference of any kind in the contest between the belligerents; and which, altho not morally indifferent, behaves so as, if possible, to remain in friendly relations with both sides. For the belligerents, the one

prime and inviolable law is this, as it is laid down in Kent's Commentaries: 'It is not lawful to make neutral territory the scene of hostility.'

"The most essential quality of diplomatic neutrality is, then, non-interference.

But in order to make it accord with the ethics of neutrality, it must have something more. And if I might venture to select three of the most necessary and conspicuous of the virtues due to the maintenance of neutrality on the part of the Government in a thoroly moral way, I should pick these three: Fairness, Reticence, and Courtesy."

Professor Ladd expresses the opinion that all three of these leading virtues of neutrality have been occasionally. transgressed in our diplomatic neutrality toward Mexico. On the other hand, he thinks that the government has ably maintained not only a formal but an ethical neutrality toward European belligerents. It should be remembered that there is a very great difference between enforcing neutrality on our own territory and interfering beyond our coast limits with the enforcement, however much to our temporary disadvantage, of the measures and selfappointed regulations of belligerents. Furthermore, fundamental moral principles which prescribe maxims for ethical neutrality of the governmental sort

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are by no means clearly defined. Laws actually observed between nations are in fact not the same as those agreed upon between honorable individuals. So, in the interest of essential justice, it is well that a certain amount of strain obliges the Government to give way and express in other than diplomatic ways the more spontaneous and passionate moral consciousness of the nations.

"The grandest thing about this other wise so hideous war is just this-the nations which are engaged in it have entered mind and soul into the contest as a struggle between right and wrong, righteousness and unrighteousness, with an intensity of conviction and on a scale of operations never before paralleled in the world's history. Nowhere is it mere hirelings that are fighting.

"But having taken this position for themselves, the belligerent nations cannot complain of the so-called neutral nations if they exercize freely and openly, so long as the morals of diplomatic neutrality are observed by their Governments, their own inalienable right and obligation to have and to express their moral judgments and moral sentiments."

The time has come, Professor Ladd asserts, when the American people are bound morally to lay aside all appearance of the neutrality of indifference

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to moral issues. With greatly increased freedom they may express sufficiently enlightened judgment on certain actions of the belligerents from the standpoint of the "ethics of neutrality." The fundamental ethical principle is simply this: all nations as well as all individuals are bound to give supreme regard to the moral considerations, in declaring and waging war, as well as in the conduct of peace. That Germany caused this war, that Germany invaded neutral Belgium, and that Germany has exhibited barbarous hatred and contempt toward all who have ventured to oppose her, this professor considers facts well enough proven to warrant expression of moral judgment.

"We will try to keep our Government supported in a course of diplomatic neutrality according to the customs and laws regulating the intercourse of neutrals with belligerent nations so long and so far as we can in accordance with the underlying moral principles.

"But the time may come, and that soon, when the people will justly call upon this Government not to limit its protests so carefully to matters affecting its own comparatively unimportant commercial interests, but to make another kind of protest in the name of moral decency and of humanity at large."

DECLINE in religious belief is a serious matter for the business.of this or any other country, and a revival of religion is tremendously important to the business world, according to the Wall Street Journal. The first part of this proposition, made some eight years ago by the editor of the Journal, was quoted everywhere by religious and secular papers. He now repeats it, pointing out "that any man engaged in commerce would prefer to do business with one who sincerely believed in God, and responsibility in a future life for errors committed during his little time on earth, than with one who believed in nothing. To put it in the baldest form, the insurance risk would be less. Such a man would try to keep his contract,

not because he feared the courts or the police, but because he believed himself responsible to the Highest Court of all." The ground is laid for further argument by declaring that "there is a difference, not of degree but of kind, between the man who sincerely believes in something and the man who doubts everything. It would be wrong to say that the form of his belief does not matter. But if he is sincere, it is better to believe something than nothing. Perhaps nine-tenths of the evils from which we suffer are beyond the reach of statutory

law. But they are all susceptible to amendment by conscience through the mercy of God."

Signs are multiplying that one of the effects of the European war is the development of a widespread religious revival. This is of infinite concern to business men, asserts this influential financial journal:

"Even such movements as are inaugurated by spectacular evangelists, who preach down to their hearers rather than up to their God, are significant. If that sort of froth or scum is apparent on the surface, there is a movement of greater depth and potency below. In this direction lies reform, because the only real reform starts in the individual heart, working outward to popular manifestation through corporations, societies and legis

latures.

"Here, then, is the better remedy, and a better promise for future business man

aged under the best standards of honor and humanity, than anything Congress can enact, or the Department of Justice can enforce. Here is a movement which renders investigation committees unnecessary, which brings employer and employed together on the common platform of the love and fear of God. This is the promise of the future, and it is something which Providence in its infinite mercy grants us, to assuage the wickedness and misery of

war.

"If this great thing emerges from the

terrible conflict now in progress, if thereby there shall be created peoples sober, reverent, industrious, forbearing and not deficient in that wholesome sense of humor which is bred of pity and humility, through the goodness of God war is not we may say that, in spite of ourselves,

all loss."

These are strong words, comments Zion's Herald, but they indicate the very thing that Christianity has been insisting upon right along-that “Godliness is profitable unto all things." The New York Christian Advocate quotes from the proposition, heads it "a spiritual stabilizer for business," and moves to give the editor of the financial paper license to preach.

In the religious papers of this country one discovers a constant stream of news of revival spirit. Secular papers have played up the Billy Sunday city campaigns and the temperance pledge signing movement in which Mr. Bryan is an evangel. But the denominational organs week by week report from cities, towns and villages what in the aggregate can be characterized as nothing less than a remarkable evangelistic wave. Correspondents frequently note that one result is that people are paying up old debts.

The Sunday School Times contains an article describing the work of "Gos

pel Teams" of laymen in Kansas. There are said to be about 300 such teams and 2,000 converts in 87 towns are reported:

"All manner of men are on these workfor Jesus teams. There are lawyers, physicians, ex-prizefighters, one chief of police, a bank president, a few barbers, manufacturers, ex - saloonkeepers, coal heavers, traveling men, city editors, school-teachers, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, reporters, merchants, cattle buyers, car

penters, blacksmiths, men from the factories, all standing on the platforms speaking of the saving power of Christ. Meetings are being held in as many kinds of places as there are representative men on the teams; fashionable churches, in Salvation Army halls, on the street cor

ners, in missions, Y. M. C. A. Sunday afternoon and Saturday evening meetings, parks, pool-rooms, schools, theaters, colleges, country churches and schools-all have been scenes of these campaign meetings."

An Ohio Convention for Methodist Men at Columbus, the state capital, recently enrolled an attendance of 3,456 delegates, and the keynote of the convention was missionary evangelization in view of the opportunity opened by the unprecedented war-crisis in the world of to-day. National campaigns of evangelism for 1915-16 are being organized by various denominations. The Universalist Leader reports itself "as

startled and delighted at the results" of a short campaign of evangelism unique in the history of that denomination. The Leader puts the situation thus: "The religious world is being awakened as it has not been in many generations, and the awakening is but at its beginning. The next ten years will witness such a religious revival as has never been known before. The very foundations of the religious nature will be upheaved, religious hunger will be ravenous, and if human souls can not get the best they will take what they can get, tho it be the worst. They are bound to have something. If, as we say, we have the best, are we ready to deliver the goods?"

public attention is directed to the exist

ence of a student religious movement. At Yale the culmination of an organized University Christian Association movement was a series of addresses by George Sherwood Eddy, who recently returned from conducting a remarkable campaign of student meetings in China. The "revival" or "awakening" at Yale, as it is variously termed by religious papers, included preliminary and supplementary meetings at dormitories and fraternity houses. Student organizations freed their schedules from conflicting dates for four days, and about 1,000 names were recorded of those who indicated that their special interest had been aroused. The secretary of the university said in The Yale Alumni Weekly that these special religious services were the most successful held within his recollection:

"Mr. Eddy's four main addresses were straightforward and helpful presentations of the essential truths of Christian faith and life. His experience in presenting the essentials of Christianity to students of China and India, who know little about our religion, has given him the power of concentrating on fundamentals. No one could have attended the four evening addresses in Woolsey Hall, each of which was attended by over a thousand students -about equally divided between the college and the scientific. school - without having his own faith strengthened and his determination to lead a life of moral purity and high purpose increased. There was nothing emotional, or sensational, or 'revivalistic,' in the old sense of the word, about the meetings, but it was evident that a large amount of careful preparation had been made for them, and that many Christian men in different parts of

Similar meetings at other institutions have been projected and commentators classes in the background of the movenote the importance of Bible study ment at Yale and elsewhere. Writing in The Congregationalist, Clayton Sedgwick Cooper reports that during the last college year over 30,000 men continued two months or more in attendance upon voluntary Bible classes in 490 educational institutions in the United States and Canada.

"This interest was by no means confined to the older institutions in the East or to strictly denominational or church colleges, but included institutions all over the South and West, many of them technical in character. Nor is this Bible interest confined to the men who are preparing to be ministers or who, as members of Christian churches, would perhaps be expected to take interest in Bible investigations. On the contrary, the greatest gains for the Bible seem to be coming at present from institutions which make no claim to be sectarian, or whose charter forbids regular teaching in the curriculum. "There were over 7,000 non-Christian students attending voluntary Bible classes in colleges last season. Many Chinese students were enrolled; several classes of Jewish young men were among the Bible groups; and a class which succeeded in a marked measure at an Eastern university was composed of eight different nationalities and religions. . . . Over 800 college professors who, with scores of pastors, were engaged closely with students in the Bible campaigns in educational centers training teachers, leading classes, helping in Bible conferences, rallies, social occasions connected with the Bible departments, and often greatly assisting as advisers concerning the whole Bible development. As a result of this united effort on the part of all classes in the college environment we now have a condition of Bible interest intensely valuable in itself and decidedly important to the church."

Statistics regarding religious preferences of students at the University of Illinois, which claims to stand second in the number of undergraduate enrolments in the United States, have recently become available. Out of 3,253 students who volunteered to state their religious affiliations, 3,001 belonged to so-called orthodox denominations and 41 shades of religious beliefs were confessed. Methodists, Presbyterians and Unitarians have student churches, the Church of the Disciples has a combined University and City Church, one of the largest denominations is said to have more students at this state university than at all of its denominational colleges in the state combined. Unity, Chicago,

comments:

"The lesson of all this is obvious. The investing of large sums of money in denominational colleges that number their students by hundreds, to the neglect of the students in the great State universities that are numbered by the thousands, is not only bad denominational policy but it is a sad diversion of religious enthusiasm and spiritual potency. These State institutions, as the above figures show, are splendidly non-sectarian, or, to better word, pan-denominational, but they deal with a constituency that is by no means indifferent to religion or not amenable to religious influenes.

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"It is well to surround these State Universities with a cordon of denominational churches each bidding for its share of students, but it would be much better if the denominations who have sufficient identity of beliefs and methods could unite in a few great union churches, manned by commanding ministers and directed by efficient social and other instrumentalities. Certainly three or four such great college churches could appeal with great power without violence to their convictions to the great bulk of the student body. [Unity suggests four: Union Protestant Orthodox, Protestant Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Liberal.]"

On account of the opposition to the